During much of the period under discussion Formosa was ruled by civilian governors-general who tolerated limited political activities to induce native cooperation. Formosans, however, wanted to use their organizations to obtain political concessions. The Assimilation Society (Dōkakai 1914–1915) and the New People's Society (Shinminkai, 1918–1923) sought equal treatment with the Japanese. The League for the Establishment of a Formosan Parliament (Taiwan Gikai Kisei Dōmei, 1920–1934) and the Taiwan Cultural Association (Taiwan Bunka Kyōkai, 1921–1930) advocated home rule by creating a colonial legislature. The Popular Party (Minshūto, 1927–1931) and the League for the Attainment of Local Autonomy (Taiwan Chihōjichi Kisei Dōmei, 1930–1937) supported the liberalization of local autonomy by demanding suffrage, irrespective of race. All resorted to racial consciousness to augment their movements, while staying within legal limits. In the end all were suppressed. Their leaders were heavily influenced by the political liberalism of the 1920's in Japan and received the active support of many famous Japanese liberals. Significantly, while Formosan leaders were conscious of being Chinese and were even stimulated by certain nationalistic events in China, their movements never produced sentiment supporting the island's restoration to China.

Because the so-called “three teachings” (Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism) lost much of their separate identity and exclusivist appeal during the 300 years between mid-T'ang and Southern Sung, the syncretism developed by Chu Hsi and others in the 13th century represented not an explicit fusion of these three teachings, but an integration of several 11th and 12th century interpreters, of proliferated early Confucian canonical literature, and a revival of the tao, which served to confirm the legitimate position of the “contemporary” Sung with respect to their classical heritage. This new syncretism, called tao-hsüeh, was immediately vulnerable as the vain, unnecessary and fundamentally unacceptable effort of a few men to monopolize the true tao, both to solidify their own philosophical position and to gain political advantages. As the attack on tao-hsüeh turned to an attack on wei-hsüeh (“false learning”) in the 1190's, it became associated with a wave of anti-intellectualism generated in part by the exclusivism of serious (i.e., tao-hsüeh) philosophers, the simultaneous commonization of general learning, and the pretention of would-be intellectuals. Tao-hsüeh then became orthodox in the early 14th century primarily in an effort to reverse this anti-intellectual trend.

While Japanese historians have characterized the period from the 1720's to the mid-nineteenth century one of a “stagnant” population due to depressed economic conditions, recent economic evidence suggests that peasants were enjoying a higher standard of living. By making use of demographic data obtained from the shūmon-aratame-chō (religious investigation registers), the hypotheses that the standard of living was rising and that the Japanese were controlling population were tested for Fujito village of Okayama. The population increased from 596 to 694 between 1775–1863. In the 1820's, with rapid economic growth in the form of land reclamation and the increased adoption of farm by-employments, principally weaving, the natural growth rate of the population was rejected through an analysis of the effects of the Temmei famine (1780's) and the Tempō famine (1830's). Rather, the slow rate of growth was due to the smallest number of children ever born to women in the village (mean of just over three), resulting from a high age at first birth (24.6 years) and a relatively low age at last birth (35–37 years). The low age at last birth, added to a statistically biased sex ratio of last-born children (favoring males), indicate that abortion and infanticide were probably practiced to some degree. This fact, combined with the economic development of the nineteenth century, suggest that in Japan, as in England, premodern population was kept at closer to an optimum rather than a maximum level, making possible rapid industrialization.

According to prevailing historical opinion, the United States made reasonable claims against China after the Boxer rising in 1900 and later spontaneously remitted the surplus indemnity as an act of friendship. In gratitude, the Chinese freely determined to use the returned funds to educate Chinese in the United States. The records of the Chinese foreign office and the Department of State suggest a different story. In 1901 John Hay intentionally inflated American claims against China despite protests that his demand of $25,000,000 was excessive (in fact twice real claims). After three years of persistent effort, the Chinese Minister to the United States committed the reluctant Roosevelt administration to return of the surplus. But W. W. Rockhill, the Minister in Peking, feared the Chinese would squander the money and campaigned to have the funds devoted exclusively to education even though the Chinese government preferred projects of more immediate benefit. In 1908 Yuan Shih-k'ai and Hsu Shih-ch'ang sent a subordinate, T'ang Shao-i, to Washington to propose use of the funds in Manchuria. However, the Roosevelt administration, already won by the education scheme, rebuffed T'ang. The remission was accomplished essentially on American terms in 1909.

Despite the bitter legacy of clashes between India's Hindus and Muslims since the 1880's, the alienation of Muslims from the Indian National Congress, which was reflected in die rise of the Muslim League, was reversed as the result of a number of political developments between 1910 and 1916 and through the efforts of leading personalities on both sides, most notably Jinnah, Wazir Hasan, Gokhale and Mrs. Annie Besant. Nationalist Muslims, some of whom were already prominent in Congress, increasingly captured control of key positions in the Muslim League, and linked hands with Congress' goal of secularism and its claims to represent all Indians. A series of developments and meetings led to the compromise of the Lucknow Pact. This prepared the way for Hindu-Muslim cooperation in agitational politics, 1919–22. Simultaneously, however, the negotiations for the Pact alienated important groups, notably Hindu groups in the Punjab and Bengal, and encouraged Hindu and Muslim communalists to build up communal organisations asserting and working for the separate interests of tJieir respective communities. This helped to prepare the way for the communal clashes in the 1920's.

Harry benda's association with Asian studies stemmed from bitter accident, for he had been of a Prague Jewish family; when Hitler took over Czechoslovakia, his father arranged for Harry's exodus by getting him a job in a Dutch trading firm in the East Indies. A brother was the only other member of the family to escape death under Nazi rule. In Java, Benda settled down to learn the life of a European merchant, but he had too lively a mind to be content with latter-day colonial society. He saw the remnants of a great indigenous tradition around him, and the stirrings of a new life; he began to meet scholars who were interested in Indonesian culture and from them developed a broad intellectual interest in the people of Java. Many of these intellectuals vanished into concentration camps with the coming of the Japanese; and in 1943 Benda joined them, when the Japanese decided to intern Jews. For many of those intellectuals who survived the camps, the experience was a time of learning and reorientation; so also for Benda, whose interest in Indonesian society deepened into the determination to pursue its study as a career.

The historical experience of the Chinese Communist Party before 1949 has often assumed the dimension of a myth. As in any myth, what actually happens is not as important as the significant lesson to be learned. A case in point is the battle of “the last and the most strategic pass” of La-tzu-k'ou in the Long March. The Chinese annals contain at least five differing versions of this encounter on September 17–18, 1935. This may be attributed, inter alia, to the desire of the authors to glorify their own part in the Long March as much as that the battle of La-tzu-k'ou is of greater political than military significance. By publishing these accounts, the Chinese authorities hope to prove the correctness of Mao Tse-tung's policy of the northward march in mid-1935. Indeed Lin Piao's role was largely a magniloquent account of relevant events at La-tzu-k'ou, following his appointment as Minister of National Defense to succeed the disgraced P'eng Te-huao in 1959—notwithstanding the fact that Mao Tse-tung had in 1935 composed a well-known poem praising only P'eng's valor during the battle. True, history is historiography and historiography is politics in the People's Republic of China.

Bibliographic control of South Asian P.L. 480 materials in local languages presents numerous problems in spite of the useful aids and services provided by the Library of Congress. In order to record in machine readable form entries for the items received, and to add them to the existing data bank a simple automated system was devised. It consists of sequential and alphabetical listings for each language and a subject index based on a thesaurus of descriptors, taking into account characteristic features of a given language. Instantaneous retrieval via the above-mentioned elements is assured. Furthermore the system provides data for subject content analysis of the collection by language.

A review article on two books, each of which proposes to apply standard economic anlaysis to an aspect of economic life (labor markets) and a society (Japan) where years of conventional wisdom has suggested that such analysis may be out of place. Robert Evans, Jr.'s Labor Economies of Japan and the United States compares numerous aspects of the allegedly impersonal labor market of the United States; he finds the differences surprisingly small and the parallels surprisingly large. Koji Taira's Economic Development and the Labor Market in Japan is primarily a series of studies in the quantitative economic history of Japan, concentrating upon the labor market. The two books overlap to a great extent, and combine to question if not overthrow the anti-economic notion that standard analysis is out of place in dealing with labor problems even in a country with the anti-economic traditions of pre-Meiji Japan.

The New Year Ceremony at Basak (South Laos) by Charles Archaimbault, which is the subject of this review article, provides a superb illustration of the way in which ritual and mythical symbols express historical alterations in social structure and social experience. While there has been continuity in the symbols of the New Year ceremony, the ritual context which invests these symbols with meaning has changed. This change reflects the diminution of the power of the putative ruler of Campasak who plays the crucial role in the ceremony.

Involving the efforts of over one hundred scholars for over fifteen years, the dictionary is now wrapped up in four giant volumes of more than one million printed words. Its publication not only fills a major void on the reference shelf of modern Chinese history but also thrusts upon scholarly attention many compelling issues by the collective presentation of the biographies of some six hundred Chinese leaders who were active in 1911–1949 in the fields of politics and the military as well as in business and banking, literature, the arts, the press and publishing, education, medicine, and religion. In response to the urgent need for Chinese Communist studies in mid-20th century America, the work covers the prominent figures in the People's Republic who appeared during the Republican (1912–49) period. The concern for contemporary development is also reflected in the omission of many important figures whose career had little relevance to the rise of the Chinese Communist state and in the emphasis on the military and politics. Many native Chinese writers contribute to the dictionary their intimate knowledge of the period as well as their biases, taboos, and myths. Since there is much room for improvement in terms of historical perceptiveness and scholarly balance, three proposals are given, aimed at adding the finishing touch to this monumental work.